Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan To Expand Singapore Office Space
SINGAPORE – By 2023, the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan plans to move into new offices here that can accommodate around 45 to 50 staff, reported Bloomberg on Friday (30 September, SGT).
This comes as the Toronto-based investor is considering to double its manpower in Singapore from 25 currently. With the additional headcount, its office in the city-state would surpass its Hong Kong branch, where there’s currently 35 employees.
“We are planning to be able,” to double headcount in Singapore, said Jo Taylor, President and CEO of the Pension Plan. “You know what happens when you open a nice new office, they tend to get filled.”
The office expansion and additional hiring comes as the C$243 billion ($177 billion) Canadian fund ramps up its expansion in Asia.
Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan joins other Canadian pension funds that are adding employees and deploying more capital to Asia.
During the Milken Institute Asia Summit on Thursday, the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System’s President and CEO Blake Hutcheson revealed that they aim to boost assets in the region by about 3-fold in the next eight years from C$13 billion currently. The Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec also intends to invest C$15 billion over the next 5 years.
“Singapore gives us another dimension in terms of dealing with Southeast Asia and Australia,” explained Taylor, during an interview on Friday from the fund’s Singapore office, which was opened in 2020.
The city-state is “clearly a vibrant financial hub with lots of really helpful co-investors and financial advisers.”
Still, Hong Kong will remain a base for the fund’s investments in the Greater China area, although “we have seen movement from Hong Kong to Singapore for some financial services,” said Ben Chan, Executive Managing Director for Asia Pacific at the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
“For us, if we are going to be active in Southeast Asia and Australia, then naturally the place to be is here (Singapore),” he added.
